


Seven Days of the Seven

by greyathena



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, JB Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-23 08:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16155377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyathena/pseuds/greyathena
Summary: Jaime Lannister arrives in the North, bringing his gods with him.  For JB Week 2018, one chapter for each of the Seven.





	1. The Maiden

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just going to keep writing variations on this same scene until it happens for real. Wheeeeeee, here we go.

**Prelude**

They stood on the upper walk like stair-steps, Sansa beside her and Arya beside Sansa. The wind, which had been vicious moments ago, suddenly stilled and a quiet fell over the dooryard. The snow settled into a slow, silent drift. Everyone stilled. From the forge, off in the distance, came one more hammerfall and then everything paused. A snowflake landed on Brienne's glove as it clasped the railing.

"That's Ser Jaime," Sansa said into the hush. "Something's wrong."

Brienne said nothing, continuing to stare at the solitary man, heavy with exhaustion, leading his single horse through the gate. 

"Why's he alone?" Arya asked. Her tone was sharper than Sansa's. It cut through the hush with the ring of steel. 

"Like I said," Sansa replied, evenly, her impatience showing only in the background of her voice, the old _my little sister is a pain_ sigh. "Something's wrong."

Jaime had seen them. He was looking up, his expression closed, his gaze intense.

"Sansa says you know him," Arya said. "He would trust you."

Arya definitely sounded as if she were interested in using that trust more _against_ Jaime than _for_ their common cause. "Yes, my lady," Brienne said cautiously.

"Did he tell you anything? When you saw him?" Arya pressed.

The real answer was _nothing_ , but then his actions belied the little he'd said - he'd seemed to say there was nothing he could do, but then there'd been a promise from the queen after all. His actions had told her something. Her oaths wouldn't let her lie to the Stark girls, but this wasn't a lie really. He just hadn't said the words. "Only that the Lannister armies would make common cause with us. That he'd come North with them."

Technically, Cersei had said that last part, and also not in words. She'd only said _my armies_ , but her eyes had glanced toward her brother.

"Well," Sansa said. "He's come North."

A fourth figure joined them - on Brienne's other side, she'd ruin the stair-step picture. From deep inside a furred hood Lady Mormont asked, "Is that the Kingslayer? My man said it was."

Brienne swallowed the words _don't call him that_. "It is Ser Jaime," she said.

"Where's he left his army?"

"That is the question, isn't it," said Sansa.

 

**I. The Maiden**

They stood on the upper walk like stair-steps, Brienne on the left, stern and with her hand on the pommel of her sword; a pale, auburn-haired beauty nearly as tall beside her, and beside _her_ , a sharpish waif who looked like a shorter Lyanna Stark. _The Hound told true_ , Jaime thought. _She really does have both of them_. Of course she did. She was miraculous.

It was very quiet. Moments before, the wind had been whipping ice into his eyes and he'd been half blinded, but as he came through the gate everything had stilled. He suspected it was because everyone in Winterfell's dooryard - the snow itself - was staring at him. Watching.

He was so tired, and so cold, and it was so quiet, that his mind sank into a sort of calm delirium. The snowflakes were warm as they touched his face. The horse's breath was almost as loud as his heartbeat in his ears. An aura of light surrounded Brienne and the Stark girls, up on the walk. _The Maiden_ , he thought, holding his breath to look at them. The Maiden had never looked like this in any statue or any icon he'd ever seen, but this . . . His head was light, reeling, visionary, certain. This was right. Nothing was as simple as the statues in a sept. The Maiden had so many faces. 

Brienne glowing almost as white as the snow, fierce, limned in gold, defender of maidens, of maidenhood, her own (though Jaime had helped, he'd helped) and others'; Sansa, though she was twice-married and no longer, strictly speaking, a maiden, she wore her maidenhood proudly as if not even a savage like the Bolton bastard had managed to take it from her; the little one, vicious Arya, her angry eyes simmering in a way completely unlike Brienne's fierceness; Brienne was the Maiden's honor, Arya was her rage.

It was so quiet. So still. He might fall down.

There was another one now, tiny, hooded like the girl from the woods in the tales; _someone should protect you from the wolves, child_ , but that wasn't right, she was standing there with the wolves, as stern and winter-pale as any of them. Barely even a maiden, that one; could you be a maiden if you were too young to bleed? Either yes or no seemed ridiculous.

"Ser Jaime," Sansa called, low, commanding, and the spell broke.

He had to be awake now. There were too many ways to die.

"My lady," he called. _My goodsister. My oath. My honor._ "I have some bad news."

"Is it you?"

He almost laughed. That voice, yes, that ridiculously shrewish voice in a child's tone, that was definitely Arya Stark.

"Believe it or not, Lady Arya," he said, squinting at her, keeping his focus, "there's worse news than me."

"Your army," Brienne said, breaking her silence if not her stillness. In contrast to the calm sureness of the Stark sisters, she almost stammered. "The Queen's army."

"With the Queen," he replied.

He didn't understand the way all of them tensed, Arya gripping the rail as if she planned to vault it. "Cersei is coming here?" she asked, her voice high, shrill.

Oh, no. Mistake. No.

"No, my lady," he said hastily. "I mean - no. She is not, and neither is the army."

"I don't understand," Arya said.

"She lied," said Sansa, utterly sure, utterly calm, hard as the Stranger. They'd all made her so hard.

"She lied," Jaime confirmed. "She lied . . . to me, she lied - a lot. Anything she said, anything she - I don't think I could identify something she's said that was true." Not since Tommen. Not since . . . He blinked hard. The snow was picking up again. "Perhaps there is a better place - I should speak with -" _don't call him Snow - snow, everywhere, blowing into his open mouth_ \- "the king, I should - there's more, there are other things I need to tell him -"

"He's fainting," he heard Brienne say. Bless Brienne. He should be embarrassed, but he couldn't be embarrassed when there was all this snow and the Maidens were talking to him from the heavens. "He must have been riding hard, alone, for days - he'll -"

"Wycken," Sansa said to someone he couldn't see. Drily, she was so dry in all this snow. "Get Ser Jaime into the hall before he swoons. Fetch someone to take his horse."

From the shadows the snow said _yes, milady_.

Into the hall was good. The doors were opening already, a golden light streaming. He hadn't been indoors in days. It was heavenly in there. The Seven had judged him worthy enough. The Maiden. By her protection, maybe he wouldn't die. Yet.


	2. The Smith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime's musings are still pretty on the nose.

**II. The Smith**

Jaime - well, before he'd started hallucinating - had imagined his reception at Winterfell going a number of different ways. His immediate execution figured in several of them. In none of them did he end up on a bench before the fire, surrounded by Starks who handed him a cup of hot wine instead of killing him.

The wine was weak, but at least it was warm.

His heart had leapt into his throat at the sight of the boy in the wheeled chair, pushed into the hall by a fat man in the black of the Night's Watch. But Bran Stark had said almost nothing, only watching quietly as his sisters answered Jaime's questions.

Another surprise. He hadn't exactly expected to be the one asking the questions.

"Your brother is not here?" he asked. The fat one looked a bit twitchy at the question, but no one else reacted. "I did not see any dragons, either."

"They're on their way to Eastwatch," Sansa said, after a quick glance at her sister. "The Wall has fallen."

Jaime nearly choked on his wine, which would have been a far too comical response to such news. "No," he said.

"It's true," Bran said. There was something . . . dull, about his voice. Empty. Had the fall injured more than his legs?

"How?" Jaime asked, because the Wall was a more immediate, and more shocking, subject than whatever was wrong with the Stark boy.

Another glance between the sisters, before Sansa responded, "The White Walkers have a dragon. An undead dragon."

He wanted to say "no" again, and possibly never stop, but the truth was staring him in the face. "She only had two," he said. "In King's Landing, there were only two dragons."

Everyone else in the little circle was nodding at him solemnly.

"We sent a raven to meet the ships at White Harbor," Sansa said. "They were going to go directly there and see if there is anything . . ."

Jaime sipped his wine to cover his terror. So much worse, then, than they'd even believed when he tried to convince Cersei . . . so much worse, so fast. "Daenerys Targaryen came with one dragon," he said, finally, "and burned half my army where they stood. Surely with two, they can just fire the armies of the dead as they come through - ?"

"She can't risk losing another one," said Sansa. "She can help, but if the Night King is there . . ."

"The Night King?" Jaime waved his still-gloved golden hand. "Never mind. Please don't tell me."

In all this, Brienne was silent. Jaime wasn't too proud to admit that in some of his visions of his arrival, Brienne had gallantly protected him from those who would do him harm, or had secreted him into the castle until she could speak to King Snow on his behalf. But then, he knew Brienne, and he _had_ also envisioned the possibility that she might sit silently and watch. She'd never wasted words.

Jaime's eye focused on the man he didn't know, who did have a certain familiar something about him. "Have we met?"

"Once," the man said, a bit eagerly. "When I was a boy. At a tourney in the Reach. I'm Samwell Tarly."

Jaime's blood froze in his veins despite the influence of the wine. "Tarly," he said. "Randyll's son?"

"Yes!" The man fairly beamed at Jaime, which made what had to follow even worse.

"I'm sorry," Jaime said, bowing his head for the required moment. Tarly deserved that at least, as did his son, who'd saved Jaime's life. "Your father and brother fought with my army at Highgarden, when the Dragon Queen attacked."

Samwell Tarly's genial face had gone blank and pale. A girl Jaime hadn't noticed before slipped from the shadows and sat next to him, holding his arm. "They fell?" Tarly asked.

So easy to say yes. But it seemed this man hadn't met the Dragon Queen yet, and when he did, everyone had better have all their cards on the table. "They were captured and executed, by dragon fire," Jaime said. Quietly, Sansa Stark gasped and Arya hissed. "For refusing to bend the knee to Daenerys."

"The Dragon Queen killed Sam's father?" Arya said, a note of danger in her voice.

Jaime nodded.

"And you killed hers," Arya added.

"Yes," said Jaime. "And we're all about to be on the same side. Your brother is either a genius or the greatest fool in all Westeros."

"Surely," said Brienne, so suddenly that Jaime slopped a bit of wine over the side of his cup. "Surely when she comes, J- Ser Jaime, you will have to explain. About the Mad King."

Most of the other faces turned to him with interest, but Jaime said only, "Perhaps. If she'll hear it, I suppose she has a right to the story."

"I don't see how she can hold a grudge," said the woman sitting beside Tarly. Her accent was North-rough, her face open and guileless. "It seems like half of you here have killed someone else's father."

"But we are not all queens, my lady," Jaime said.

"I'm not anyone's lady."

"You might be." Jaime looked at her with a moment of interest. "Are you his wife?"

"I'm a Brother of the Night's Watch," Tarly stammered.

"Splendid," Jaime said. He looked around again at his audience. "Did I hallucinate the little one?"

"What?" Sansa asked.

"Outside, there was another girl, a small one."

"Lady Lyanna Mormont," Brienne said. Her tone was gentle; she liked the girl. Interesting.

"One of her bannermen wanted her," Sansa supplied.

Her bannermen? "Is she really all that's left of House Mormont?" Jaime asked.

"Yes, the rest were killed by the Freys at my uncle's wedding," said Arya, tongue as sharp as dragonglass.

Well, don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, he supposed.

"So what is our plan?" he asked.

" _Our_ plan?" Sansa drew herself up as if the social portion of this discussion were very much over.

"There is one, I assume? Other than just throwing whatever men we've got at the dead until we, or they, run out?"

"You're assuming we trust you enough to include you in our plans," said Arya. "So far all you've told us is that your sister lied to Jon. How do we know you're not lying now? You could be a spy."

Sansa didn't look at her sister, but did raise an eyebrow. "You think Cersei sent us her half-dead brother as a spy?"

"We wouldn't be expecting it, would we?"

"No, Ser Jaime's telling the truth," Tarly interjected. "That's what we came to tell you. Isn't it, Bran?"

Bran nodded. "She ordered the Mountain to kill him, because she called it treason, that he wanted to bring the armies North. He wanted to keep his vow. He came alone."

Jaime stared.

"I've become the Three-Eyed Raven," the boy said conversationally.

"Oh," said Jaime. He decided he didn't really want to know what that was any more than he wanted to hear about the "Night King". Or undead dragons.

But Bran lunged forward suddenly in his chair, grabbing Jaime's right wrist. "You owe no debts to anyone here, Jaime Lannister. You've paid."

Jaime shivered and tried not to show it. "But," he said.

"No debts," the boy repeated.

Jaime looked frantically at Brienne, who widened her eyes and shrugged just the smallest bit. Quietly, Arya Stark said, "He was never on my list."

Oh, he really did not want to know what that was about.

"The plan?" he asked faintly, drawing his arm back from Bran's grasp. "They can be killed with fire, and with dragonglass, I understand. I suppose you've got someone forging a whole mess of dragonglass weapons?"

"We have," said Sansa after a moment. "There's a smith from King's Landing - an old friend of Arya's."

There was something about the way she said it that made Jaime's eyes flicker to Arya's set, dangerous face.

"He's very talented," Sansa continued. "He's been working the dragonglass from Dragonstone into as many weapons as he can. But that's only the dead themselves. The White Walkers can be killed with Valyrian steel."

"So I have something to contribute after all," said Jaime, his left hand on the pommel of Widow's Wail. Which he really needed to rename.

"You have the other half of our father's sword," Sansa said.

There was no denying what Brienne had undoubtedly told her. "Yes."

"That's four then," said Arya. "We also have the Valyrian steel swords of Houses Mormont and Tarly. Plus my dagger."

As long as there were only four of these Walker things, that was fine then. Somehow he doubted it.

"Can you use it?"

Jaime faced down Arya's blunt question with similar frankness. "Not like I could before. Still better than some."

"What about that?" she asked, gesturing at his false hand. "Is it good for anything?"

"Lifting it keeps my arm strong."

"Could you have something else made?" the Tarly boy asked, a bit of eagerness creeping back into his voice. "If Gendry made you a dragonglass dagger or something that fitted to your arm . . ."

"Ser Jaime's hand is not the point here," Sansa interrupted. She stared him down. "He is a Lannister, but he's supposed to be a gifted commander. And Brienne vouches for him."

Ha, so she already had.

"Do we agree to trust him?" Sansa asked. "We don't know when Jon will get back and we need to strategize here. He could be useful, but we should decide now."

Arya's face was a barely-controlled whirlwind of anger and uncertainty, but she looked to her brother. "Bran?"

"He's here to fight for us," Bran said.

Arya had to grit her teeth for a moment, but she eventually said, "That's good enough for me."

"Sam?" Sansa asked.

"Oh." Tarly blinked. "I'm not -"

"Sam."

"All right. Well. Jon asked for his help. We should trust Jon's judgement." Tarly nodded to reinforce this pronouncement.

"I don't have to ask Brienne again. Fine." Sansa got to her feet. "Will you die if we take you to the smithy before finding you a bed?"

Maybe. He drained the last of his wine. "Probably not."

"Then we'd better get Gendry started on something more useful for that hand." She glanced around at her siblings and the others. "Just Brienne, I think."

"I'm coming," Arya said.

Sansa waved a hand. "Fine. Come along."

Brienne fell in beside Jaime as - still somewhat confused and slightly delirious - he followed Sansa from the hall. "Your friend is here," she said quietly.

"My friend?"

"Ser Bronn of the Blackwater?" Her tone was just mocking enough, for Brienne, that he knew she'd actually been spending time with Bronn.

"How did he -"

"He was with Podrick when I went to find him, to leave King's Landing. Apparently he'd been informed that the Kingsguard had been ordered to arrest him."

Jaime was no longer even remotely surprised that he'd known nothing about this order. "So he had to get out. And he followed you?"

"He expected to meet you here."

"He should have gone to Essos."

"Apparently you still owe him a wife and a castle."

"I probably owe him three of each by now." Jaime looked at her, for real, not in the half-light of the falling snow. She was relaxed here, certain of herself. "I'm glad to be on the same side at last, my lady."

Her eyes cut quickly in his direction. "Me too."

Jaime cleared his throat. "Is this smith as miraculous as they say?"

"Very nearly."

Well then. From the Maiden to the Smith. Maybe the gods were on his side after all.


	3. The Crone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime discovers life at Winterfell.

**III. The Crone**

When Jaime finally fell into a bed, he slept for what felt like days.

He was awakened by a lantern held over his face by a ghostly, disembodied hand. He blinked vigorously, and the black-clad arm came into view with a black-hooded, pale face above it. The boy? He'd grown. Jaime knew the boy's name . . .

"Podrick," he finally mumbled. 

"Yes, ser." The lantern was lowered so that it actually illuminated the boy holding it, rather than shining directly into Jaime's eyes. "You slept through supper. Milady thought you would want breakfast."

"Breakfast?" He rubbed his eyes, but the room didn't get any brighter. "How early is it?"

"It's after sunrise - or, it should be - but it's snowing again. Not much light in the mornings these days."

Jaime didn't even know what part of the castle he was in, or where in the room there might be a window. He vaguely remembered walking here under his own power, following the one who wasn't Tarly's wife, but it must have been a near thing. Twisting, he discovered the one small window through which a grayish, weak light was trying to shine. Snow was piled inches high on the sill.

He blinked again at Podrick. "They let me sleep through supper?"

"They send a servant to wake you, but she said you wouldn't. Then milady checked to make sure you weren't dead . . . but everyone thought you'd better rest. You weren't making a lot of sense yesterday." He paused. "Ser."

"Yes, yes." Gods, what _had_ he said yesterday. "Did I manage to tell anyone about the Golden Company? About Greyjoy?"

"Er." Podrick set the lamp down on a table Jaime hadn't noticed. "You said something about pirates and a kraken, if that's what you mean, but by then you were sort of . . ."

Wonderful. Jaime pushed himself, painfully, to a sitting position. "If I've slept a day and a half, I better had get up. What part of the castle am I in?"

"The guest house, ser. As long as you walk away from the godswood, you'll be heading for the hall." The boy deposited something on the bed - a pile of Jaime's outer clothes. "Milady's room is a few doors down," he added. "And Bronn as well."

"Did I see him last night?"

"No, he'd been in Wintertown and you were asleep when he got back. I told him you'd arrived."

"What did he say?"

Podrick half-grinned. "Can't repeat it, ser."

"Of course you can't."

"Can I help at all?" Podrick asked. "With your . . . hand, or anything?"

"No, I can manage it myself. Thank you, Pod. . . any chance of washwater?"

"In that pitcher." Podrick swung the lantern wide. There was also a washstand Jaime hadn't seen. "If you want hot it'll be a while."

"Cold is fine." He'd manage a real bath and a shave once he had his wits more about him, or he'd be likely to lose another body part. "Thank you."

"I'll leave the lamp." With another grin, the boy disappeared.

The boy. How old was Pod now? He must be twenty.

By the time Jaime staggered into the hall he was feeling a bit more awake, although he would have forgiven someone for mistaking him for the vanguard of the army of the dead. His legs moved as if he had been lying in the grave for some time.

The girl, Tarly's woman, seemed to have decided that she liked him for some reason. As he stood hesitating she called out, "You can sit here with us, Ser Jaime." For lack of any other direction, he did.

There was a golden-haired child on her lap, maybe two years old, with the wrong end of a spoon in his mouth. "This is a fine fellow," Jaime said, feeling that he should make friends. "What's his name?"

"He's Little Sam." 

"Is he. Lovely." Jaime was the last person to have an opinion on who fathered people's children, so he simply reached up to accept the bowl of porridge handed to him by a servant. Of course, there was every likelihood that the boy was now the heir to House Tarly, if Tarly's good friend King Snow would release him from his vows to the Night's Watch and legitimize the child. Stranger things had happened.

Absently, Jaime took the spoon from Little Sam's loose grip, loaded it with porridge, and handed it back to the child turned right way around. At least half of the porridge actually went into his mouth.

"There aren't many children," Jaime said, looking around the hall.

"No," the child's mother replied. He was really going to have to learn her name. Now was not the time to seem above his company, not with the Starks watching him like hawks. "We think . . . some of the families fled, if they could, between the Ironborn and the Boltons," she continued, wrestling the spoon from her son and trying to give him more porridge. "But there were a lot - when Jon and his family took back the castle, he told Sam there were a lot of . . . bodies, you know. They couldn't always tell from what was left, if they were adults or . . . or who they were. But a lot of dead."

Given where they were sitting, and why, Jaime opened his mouth to ask the next question.

"They burned them all," the girl added. "You have to. Or they can come back."

Suddenly sweating in the chilly hall, Jaime had to fight to keep swallowing his porridge.

"Are you all right, Ser Jaime?"

Jaime looked up in alarm at Samwell Tarly, who was taking a seat on the bench across from him.

Beside Jaime, the girl clucked. "He's only been riding all on his own in the snow for weeks. 'Course he's not all right. He needs a few days of decent food anyway."

"Gilly'll mother you half to death if you let her," Tarly said, smiling. _Gilly. Gilly._ Surely he could remember that. 

Jaime swallowed. "I seem to recall her making sure I found my bed last night. For which I am grateful."

Too late he realized that in some places that would be taken as a suggestive statement, but both Tarly and the girl - _Gilly_ \- just smiled and she went on trying to feed her son.

"Well, when you started talking about whether a - what was it, Sam?"

"A kraken," Tarly said. "Whether a kraken could drown a dragon."

"That's right. Well by then we thought you'd better lie down before you fell down."

"I am grateful," Jaime repeated, sinking slightly lower on the bench.

"You'd really thought it through," Tarly went on cheerfully. "I'm not sure if you made up the part about how high out of the water a kraken can reach, but it seemed very mathematical."

Jaime closed his eyes and briefly gave thanks that his brother - that neither of his siblings were here to witness this. 

The bench beside him shifted, and Jaime opened his eyes to see Brienne settling beside him. "I'm glad to see you awake," she said quietly.

"Yes, I've been hearing exactly how unawake I was yesterday," Jaime said. 

"Ah yes." She accepted her own bowl of porridge before continuing, "We weren't sure how much to believe, until you got to the part where sea monsters invaded Tarth."

"Oh, I forgot about that bit," Gilly said. "I wouldn't have thought sea monsters could walk."

A stab of recognition went through Jaime. He dropped his gold hand onto Brienne's thigh under the table, which was probably improper but much less likely to hurt than putting it over her hand on the table. "I need to talk to you, and get a message to Snow. I wasn't entirely raving last night. My sister sent Euron Greyjoy to Essos to hire the Golden Company to fight for her."

Brienne frowned, thinking. "Has she so few men left?"

"Between the attack on Highgarden and simple desertion . . . she always had fewer men to offer than Snow probably believed. But if Greyjoy and his ships full of mercenaries sail across the Narrow Sea - I was worried, I worried they might -"

Brienne shook her head. There was something in her expression that he couldn't decipher. "The Ironborn have been ignoring Tarth for centuries. And they're likely to be sailing far north of us."

"Still." He needed - he needed to make this sound like a reasonable strategic concern, so she wouldn't think he just habitually raved about her when he was delirious.

"I will send a raven to my father," she promised. Again, her look was . . . something. Soft. She almost smiled. Jaime almost smiled back, until she added, "Young Sam is about to put his porridge in your lap."

Jaime quickly diverted the errant spoon so that the dripping porridge landed on the table. "It's a queer place, this," he mused under his breath. Nothing like Winterfell of years ago, and not only because Ned and Catelyn and half their children were gone. Servants, wildlings, and sellswords mingling with the nobles in the hall. Cat would have had fits.

"It's bound to become queerer," Brienne replied. "I'd take you to the rookery but I doubt the Starks would trust you to send any messages yet."

"Unless they're idiots," he agreed.

"So I think we'd better tell Sansa about the Golden Company and let her get word to her brother, if she can."

Jaime nodded. "What - is there anything I _can_ do? While we wait for news from Eastwatch?"

"I've been training most of the day - teaching the smallfolk, and the children mostly."

"The children?"

Brienne nodded somberly. "When the dead come . . . anyone who can hold a sword had better know how to use it."

He might never stop shivering, in this place.

"Gilly and some of the other w- women of the Free Folk look after the youngest children," Brienne said. "While we're preparing."

"I already know how to use a spear if I have to," Gilly interjected.

Jaime believed her.

"You could help," Brienne said.

"I assume you don't mean help the women with the children."

Another almost-smile from the Maid of Tarth. "I meant help me. Some of them hold their swords in their left hands, actually."

"Ah, so I might even be useful."

"Though you're welcome to stay with us in the hall if you like," Gilly said, a shy tease in her voice. "The old ones would like it. They say you're the handsomest southerner they've seen yet."

"I have got Little Sam's vote of confidence," Jaime acknowledged, gently separating the child's fingers from his beard. "But I expect I will be of more assistance to Lady Brienne."

"Suit yourself." Gilly stood, her baby on her hip, and reached down one of the lanterns hanging on the wall. "I'd better get Little Sam cleaned up while there's a lull in the snow."

Was there? Jaime looked up at the windows, but all he saw was gray dimness. 

"She'll be going by the armory if you want to follow her," Brienne said.

Jaime shook his head. "I'll wait for you. Not sure my legs work yet." He watched as Gilly wove through the hall, lantern held before her, and out into the courtyard with at least two additional small children tagging after her. Not many children, nor as many smallfolk and servants as there would have been before the depredations of the Ironborn and the Boltons - but enough. Enough to have to defend if the dead came.

Perhaps he ought to find Catelyn's sept before beginning his day.


	4. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With any luck, the entire North won't be meeting one of the gods soon.

**IV. The Stranger**

Brienne walked through Winterfell's courtyard as if she belonged exactly where she was, which Jaime realized he'd never seen in her before. She'd always carried herself with that unshakeable confidence that came from utter certainty that she was doing her duty, but she always seemed awkward in her surroundings. As if she knew that people were judging everything about her and deeming her wrong, as if she couldn't possibly fit in anywhere. Not with noble ladies, not with men either. But here she was in her element. Was it the Stark girls' acceptance that made her so easy in their home? Or the willing crowd waiting to be instructed by her, eager to trust her to defend and protect them?

Podrick was standing in the yard with a girl of perhaps ten or eleven, dark-haired and pale, who was giving Jaime what his mother would have referred to as the gimlet eye. He thought maybe this was the same girl he'd seen standing with Brienne on the walk when he arrived. She was holding the grip of a practice sword, the point down and resting in the snow, the grip nearly as high as her shoulder. Jaime questioned whether she could even lift it, but her expression dared anyone to challenge her.

More children, a gaggle of them anywhere from six years old to twelve, surrounded Brienne as soon as she appeared. The youngest were carrying wooden swords, which they were using mostly to whack indiscriminately at one another. Jaime grinned as Brienne tried to call them to order, though he stopped grinning when she began a sentence with "If you-" and then cut herself off. Because of course. Jaime's master of arms would have threatened to throw him out of the lesson if he didn't behave, but these children weren't being taught to fight so that they could be chosen by some noble knight as his squire and eventually gain honor for themselves as knights in their own right. They were being taught so that they might not die, and Brienne couldn't dismiss any of them. One way or another, even the smallest had to learn something.

And of course, they might all die anyway. No one was talking about how long a pack of children could hold off the army of the dead if all the seasoned fighters had already fallen - and, probably, joined the enemy's ranks.

"No one really expects those smallest ones to fight," Podrick said, as if he could read Jaime's mind. Probably he didn't need to; Jaime had never been particularly good at controlling his expression. "But they may as well start learning. Milady says so many fighting men have died already, in the War of the Five Kings, in the wars in the North - by the time this is over, there will be so few left of all those armies. The ones who never used to fight will have to take their place. The smallfolk, young ones, women."

"Interesting thought," Jaime said, leaning against a post near where Podrick and the girl were standing. So far she seemed uneager to join the throng around Brienne. "Or perhaps," Jaime considered, "there will be a great deal less fighting, once most of the fighters are dead, and we won't have to keep putting swords in children's hands."

"Your brother," said Podrick after a moment, "when I saw him in the capital - your brother said Daenerys is going to break the wheel."

"Break the wheel." Jaime mulled that over. "I suppose he thinks she's different from her father."

"Don't you?"

"The only thing I know about her is how many good men she's burned," Jaime said. "She may even have beaten Aerys's record already. That would be an achievement to be proud of. He didn't have dragons."

"You don't trust the Dragon Queen?" the girl asked. Her voice was sharp, like Arya's. A true daughter of the North; none of Myrcella's sweetness.

"Do you?" Jaime asked her.

"Jon Snow is my king," she replied without hesitation. 

"Quite," Jaime said. "Him I do trust, oddly. His honor, anyway." Suddenly he wondered whether these Northerners knew that their king had bent the knee to Daenerys. Brienne would have heard him say so, but had she told anyone? If Sansa knew, had she shared this news with her people yet?

Best not to mention it, just in case. If they didn't know, they'd take it on Jaime's lips as a slander and be even less likely to accept him on their side.

"Should I trust you?" the girl asked, turning that piercing look up at Jaime.

He looked down at her seriously. "To do what, my lady?"

She visibly appreciated the question. Her back straightened as she thought. "To fight on the side of the North and not betray us, to the army of the dead or to your sister. To anyone."

"In that case, yes. You can." He extended his left hand toward her practice sword. "May I?"

She handed it over, chin high in ready defiance.

The balance was terrible, which was to be expected. This sword looked as though it had trained generations of Starks. "Do they train girls to fight on Bear Island?" he asked, hoping he was remembering correctly that this was the Mormont girl.

"Some."

Jaime glanced over at Brienne. "She ought to have been born there."

"If she had been, she'd be dead."

Startled, Jaime looked down at the girl over the extended blade of the practice sword.

"My mother was a great warrior," the girl said matter-of-factly. "She fought for Robb Stark. If Lady Brienne had been a Mormont, she'd have died at the Red Wedding with the rest of our men."

Since that was frankly true, Jaime chose not to think about it. It had come so close to happening anyway - if Cat hadn't sent her away, if not for the attempt to trade Jaime back to his family . . . well, then he'd never have known Brienne in the first place, and they'd both be dead. Him killed one way or another in the Stark camp, and her dead at the Twins.

"Your blade should be less than a third the length of your body," he said, eyeing down the sword in his hands.

"But I'll grow," she said.

"How old are you?"

"Twelve."

Now he eyed her. "You'll grow," he said, "but not much. And not before the dead attack."

"But I need to make my arms stronger."

He handed her the sword, pommel first. "Hold it up. One-handed. On guard."

She struggled, but managed to balance the sword over her hand.

Jaime nodded. "You'll strengthen your arm but you'll learn bad habits. Look - Pod, look what she's doing with her wrist."

"It's broken," Pod said, correctly.

"What?" the girl asked, looking quizzically at her own arm.

"He means," Jaime said, "the way you have to bend your wrist to support the weight of the blade. It's asking for a strain. It's also going to be much easier to knock the sword out of your hand." Bracing her forearm, wrist, and hand between his good hand and the artificial one, he guided her hand into proper alignment. "Can you support the weight like that?"

To her credit, she tried valiantly when he let go. But the blade fell to the snow a moment later.

"Get her a blade the length of your arm," Jaime told Podrick. "Try to find one with some balance."

"Yes, ser." Off he went.

"Lady Brienne's been letting you practice with this one?" Jaime asked.

"I've been learning with the squires. Because I already knew a little. Lady Brienne's teaching those that never learned."

"Ah."

Pod jogged back to them with a sword much more the lady's size, and handed it to her.

"All right then," Jaime said. He hefted the larger sword in his left hand, making a deliberately comical face as he tested the balance again. "Let's have you knock this terrible sword out of my grip. Aim for the blade, if you please, I haven't got hands to spare."

She didn't smile, but lifted her sword with an air of serious study.

"Pod, fix her grip."

He was testing both of them. They both passed. Podrick clearly saw what was wrong with the angle of her wrist, and she tried to correct it herself when he momentarily took the weight of the sword out of her hand.

Jaime nodded. "Begin."

By the time some semblance of a sun was overhead, the girl had managed to knock Jaime's sword from his hand twenty or so times, and twice - swinging two-handed - hit him hard enough that he slipped in the snow and went down. It probably helped that on both occasions he had been looking at Brienne, enjoying the expression on her face as she watched him training the little girl. The girl had lost her own grip at least as many times, but she'd learned better when to bring her other hand into play. 

Specific forms were another matter, but he was less worried about skill than whether she could just hang onto her weapon. He expected the dead to attack with more brute force than finesse.

Brienne's crowd were breaking for luncheon as well, the little ones dashing for the hall while one or two of the eldest - reedy serving boys and one or two girls - took an extra moment to stab at the practice dummies with dark, earnest faces. These were old enough to understand, truly, why they were learning and what they were facing.

Brienne gave him a weary look across the yard and he nodded. This was their task, for as long as was given to them before the king and his queen returned, or the dead beat them to Winterfell. To keep the Stranger at bay.


	5. The Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime, accidentally, makes Daenerys see him in a different light.

**V. The Father**

Jaime Lannister saved himself from execution with his grief. Or, maybe more accurately, Myrcella Baratheon saved her father.

He figured his escape from immediate immolation when the Dragon Queen arrived was maybe one part due to his brother, one part due to the fact that everyone had already agreed to be on the same side in this fight, and ten parts due to the fact that when the arguing started, his first instinct was to _protect the child_. 

The child in question was, of course, supremely irritated with him for this.

Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen - and their bizarre, motley crew which included several Dothraki, a few Unsullied, Jaime's brother, the Hound, and the Flea Bottom captain who used to be known as the Onion Knight - arrived at Winterfell three weeks after Jaime. By then he'd reached a sort of detente with the Northern lords, and with Arya Stark, who all seemed about equally likely to kill him in his sleep. Spending his days with Brienne was . . . it was odd, it was almost a sort of healing for something in him that had broken over the past year. When he realized Cersei had done, in no small part, what he had slain his king to prevent. When he learned how Tommen had died, and when Tommen's mother dismissed him as weak. When he watched Olenna Tyrell die. When a dragon laid cruel waste to his army. When Cersei obsessed over killing their brother.

Brienne was - Brienne was without conflict. For the first time he could talk with her, work with her, with no worry about dividing his loyalties. He could know that he was making the right choice. Maybe his honor was beyond repair, but his soul was starting to feel as if it might someday be in one piece again. Yes, Cersei - and Cersei's baby - still weighed on his mind, but he could feel right, secure, confident, that in defending the realm from the dead he was saving their lives, too.

Moreover, he'd acquired a sidekick in the form of Lyanna Mormont. Bear Island's lady had decided that Jaime was far more worthwhile than anyone who had been training her in swordcraft before, and in the course of this decision had taken responsibility for his acceptance by the other lords. She sat next to him at meals and in council, and trailed after him when he visited the smith for work on his new dragonglass-equipped appendage.

Then there was Bronn, who seemed to do relatively little with his time other than corrupting Podrick or heckling fighters in the training yard (the adults and the oldest squires mainly; he did have the decency not to shout obscene commentary at the small children and girls). Podrick frequently looked torn between laughing at his antics and being annoyed by them; Lady Mormont had yet to crack a smile in Jaime's presence regardless of provocation; and Brienne generally looked as though she couldn't decide whether she was in on the joke or the object of it. Of course, since it was Bronn, the likely answer was "both".

And then the King in the North returned, with his Targaryen Queen at his side.

Not even Tyrion showed any surprise at seeing Jaime - or at seeing Jaime unaccompanied by any army other than Bronn - so the messages must have gone through. Unsure of his welcome but unwilling to have his fate discussed in his absence, Jaime followed the Northerners into the hall for their council as if he belonged. Perhaps he could borrow some of Brienne's certainty.

"I had hoped," Jon Snow began, his voice pitched to carry, "to announce that we were expecting to be reinforced by the crown's armies. But I understand that is not the case - Ser Jaime."

Warily, Jaime rose from his seat with all eyes turned toward him. "I regret to say that is correct." He could feel the eyes of everyone in the hall, waiting for him to add the proper honorific, but there were far too many pitfalls here. He gave a sort of bow, and hoped that would do.

"Yet you are here," Snow said.

"Yes," Jaime replied. He dared a glance at his brother, who was keeping a blank face. "I . . . was excluded from the queen's counsel on this matter. I was persuaded by the demonstration you provided, of the need to defend the realm from those creatures and sort the rest out afterward, and I believed that she was of the same opinion. It was only when I began to assemble the commanders that I learned the queen had no intention of providing assistance to the North - and that she had conspired with the Ironborn to bring the Golden Company to Westeros to strengthen her forces."

"And we should believe you?" Daenerys interjected, her tone an eerie match - deep, cold with restrained anger - for Sansa Stark's.

"I don't know if you _should_ ," Jaime said, trying to sound sincere, trying not to tremble. The crackling sound of men on fire in his ears. "But I speak the truth. My sister declares me a traitor, but I am here to keep the promises she made, so far as I can."

"As I said," Sansa said quietly beside her brother, "we have evidence that supports Ser Jaime's story. But there are things we should discuss in private. Family things."

Jaime assumed "family things" included the fact that Bran Stark had somehow turned into - well, whatever had happened to Bran Stark.

"We will come back to what should be done about the crown, and the Lannisters," Snow said, with a dire look in Jaime's direction. "My travels have resulted at least in cooperation with a new ally - with Queen Daenerys Targaryen, the rightful heir to the southern throne."

"The southern throne" was a diplomatic way of putting it, Jaime thought as the hall erupted.

"Rightful heir?" someone shouted. "We fought Robert's Rebellion to rid the kingdoms of dragons, and good riddance!"

"What business is the Iron Throne of ours?"

"Why shouldn't a Baratheon be the rightful heir?"

"There _are_ no Baratheons!"

It went on, with a roar of references to bastards and burnings and the occasional confused shout of "The King in the North!" until Snow managed to quiet them down.

"I have done my best - _always_ ," he shouted over the slowly-lessening din, "to protect the interests of the North. Queen Daenerys has fighting men, she has dragonglass and she has dragons. She has joined with us to defend our realm - her homeland - from the Night's King and his forces. She cares for the security and the survival of the Seven Kingdoms because she _is_ their rightful ruler. I acknowledge her claim, and I have pledged her my fealty. _In return_ ," he said, as the roar threatened to rise again, "for assurances that the North will not lose the independence we have always valued."

It wasn't Jaime's imagination - Samwell Tarly looked positively ill. Not that he didn't have reason - his friend had pledged fealty to the Dragon Queen who'd burned Tarly's father and brother.

"The Mad King burned Rickard Stark and his son." The angry voice of Lyanna Mormont rose above the crowd from Jaime's side. "Ned Stark fought to bring an end to Targaryen tyranny. We named you our king because you are Ned Stark's blood."

Horror rising in his gut, Jaime looked at the face of Daenerys Targaryen, which was set and hard.

"She burned Lord Tarly and his son - how is she any different from her father?" Lyanna continued.

Through his fear, Jaime saw Jon Snow's sudden pallor. He hadn't known about the execution of the Tarlys.

"The North knows no king but Stark!" Lyanna finished on a clear and confident shout, which was joined by many in the hall.

Daenerys's gaze was fixed on Lyanna. Instinctively, Jaime put his hands - the real and the golden - on the girl's shoulders and drew her back against his body. If he could have shoved her behind himself he would have, but the accursed benches were in the way.

Daenerys's eye met his. He stared back, shaking ( _BURN THEM ALL!_ ), but refused to falter.

Something changed in the Dragon Queen's face. Something . . .

"Let go!" Lyanna hissed at him.

"No," he said.

. . . wistful. That was it.

Snow laid a hand on the queen's, and she sat back in her chair. Tyrion, behind her, took a deep and visible inhale. "Lady Mormont," Snow said, clearly for the benefit of Daenerys, "I understand your concerns. I'm sure most of us who made the journey to Dragonstone shared them, before we met Queen Daenerys. I believe she can be trusted. I believe she can become a good queen."

Jaime didn't miss the word _become_ , and neither did the queen. An eyebrow raised and her stare slid just the smallest fraction in Snow's direction.

"You all put your trust in me," Snow said. "I'm asking you to trust me now."

"We need the men," someone said from the other side of the hall. Was it a Royce?

"We need the _dragons_ ," someone else yelled. 

"If they're real!"

"They're quite real," Jaime replied to the unseen man behind him. His hands hadn't budged from Lyanna Mormont's shoulders, and he stared at the queen over her head. "And so is their fire."

"So we need them!"

"Does that mean we need her?"

"Is a dragon going to listen to _you_ , Cerwyn?"

Daenerys, disconcertingly, kept her focus on Jaime, and even when she stood and lifted her chin to address the hall, she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. "I can't assure you I am not my father," she said. "I can only show you. I will not -" She looked at Jon Snow as she paused, then back out over the hall. "I will not insist that you bend the knee to me. I will not demand your fealty until this battle is done. Until we have defeated the dead and can turn our attention to the matters of the living. If you keep faith with the King in the North, that will suffice."

Other than the fact that "matters of the living" probably meant anything from attacking Cersei in King's Landing to getting around to the burning of any survivors who didn't want another Targaryen ruling them, this all sounded very reasonable.

Jaime didn't really realize that none of them were dead until the council broke, and the queen and Snow and the Starks were filing out of the hall. Then several things happened at once: Tyrion threw him a look of mixed anger and relief before following his queen; Brienne slipped over to Jaime's side; and Lyanna stomped down as hard as she could on his foot.

He released her with a muttered curse. "I apologize, my lady, but her enemies tend to end up in ashes."

"I didn't see you doing the same to Lord Royce," the girl complained.

"I don't give a damn if she incinerates Lord Royce." Jaime looked to Brienne, who was hovering. "Am I doomed?"

"I think someone would have said by now." She was pale, he saw now, and as trembly as he felt. "I think you've escaped."

"I don't know whether my brother has told her to kill me or kiss me."

" _Kiss_ you?" Lyanna asked in utter disgust.

"An expression, merely."

"Your brother looked worried," Brienne said. "I don't think he wants you dead."

"Er - mum and dad? If you don't mind?"

Jaime couldn't have said who looked more annoyed at Bronn's interjection - him, or Lyanna. Brienne just looked confused.

"It's just," Bronn continued, "now that I'm done about shitting myself, I'd like a very large drink. And I'll need someone to carry me back to my room when I'm done, so . . ." He put his arm around Lyanna's shoulders and drew her forward, ignoring her irritation. "Come along, milady, I think you've earned your first real ale."

"I'm _twelve_ , I've had ale before."

"Good, then you can teach Podrick how to handle his." He looked back at Jaime and Brienne. "Coming? If you need a moment in private first, we can wait."

"There is really only one way to shut him up," Jaime said, putting his golden hand on Brienne's back and urging her toward the door.

"Knock him unconscious?"

". . . all right, two ways."


	6. The Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mother is thoroughly irrelevant to Brienne - right?

**VI. The Mother**

What business did Brienne have moving like _that_?

Not that she couldn't; he'd said once himself that she moved well, and Jaime Lannister didn't throw around false compliments. Especially not to people he mostly hated and intended to kill if possible. 

But that had been - normal fighting moves, footwork, the kind of agility that a six-foot man in full armor could manage to demonstrate, if he was very strong. Not - this. Not moving like in Lys they'd have had a hard time deciding whether to put her in the arena or in one of the more eccentric pleasure houses.

He'd known, of course, that she had started training sometimes with Arya - known it the way anyone who spent most of his hours with her would. He'd known from watching Arya that she had learned something quite different from Westerosi swordcraft. That slender blade of hers was ridiculous until suddenly she was using it to rip a full-grown man's fighting sword out of his hands. She had skill she must have learned in Braavos or Pentos, somewhere exotic, somewhere . . . well, where being lethal was a thing one kept hidden behind a mask, instead of having the decency to bash at each other like men.

This was - well.

They were practicing in the empty hall before supper, while normal people were in the yard watching the squires swing their practice swords like pickaxes. Even little Lyanna was out there, practicing with Pod because, as she'd said so diplomatically, "You have much more knowledge, Ser Jaime. But he fights two-handed."

Much good that would do her if she faced one of those undead things with a missing arm.

It was warm in the hall, and both women were stripped down to trousers and something Jaime would have thought of as smallclothes - something not enough to be a shirt or a chemise, and too much to be merely a breast binding. They were both sweating, dampness glistening on flexing muscles. On Arya the moves were compact, something that should have been flowery and ridiculous looking instead deadly efficient. On Brienne - in Brienne's body these forms were a brutal seduction, a display simultaneously of power and . . . well, of another kind of power. Of strength and invitation. Her back and shoulders were rippled with muscle like the carved marble on a statue of the Warrior, her forearms sinewy, her hips and pelvis loose and mesmerizing.

_What business had she . . ._

Brienne wasn't - well of course she was a woman; it was what made her so monstrous to half the people she encountered, so wrong. It was what made her vulnerable. A knight who could be raped like any maiden; Jaime had only ever seen that as a weakness, and he thought she had, too. A humiliation. She could be one of the men only to a point, only until one of them decided to show her her place.

All right, it would take more than one. But still. She'd come close at least twice just in the time they'd spent together.

But she wasn't a _woman_. Not like this. Not one who had a sexuality that was a weapon, rather than a weakness. Not one who would draw men in, make them stare.

Jaime was staring.

"Would you like to join, Ser Jaime?"

Arya's blithe tone was too innocent. Had she seen him staring at Brienne, or had he managed to look interested in -

"It's water dancing," she continued, waving that stiletto of a weapon. "With some modification I learned."

He was thinking - gods help him, he was thinking about fighting Brienne like this. Only without swords. _I'm strong enough_ , he'd boasted to her, but he didn't mean like that now - or maybe even then he'd meant it like this - like a fair fight where both were aiming for the same outcome, where eventually one of them would end up on top and even if it was her, the result would be the same . . .

He was sweating, and about to embarrass himself. By now he'd have to say yes, if only because it was an excuse to take off his jerkin.

Five minutes later, he was balanced on just his right forearm and right foot, dripping sweat into his eyes and wondering what he'd ever done to Arya Stark in particular to make her this cruel. At least it was distracting. While being put through increasingly insane exercises - could Brienne do this? - at least he was working too hard to think about the way Brienne moved through the forms of the water dance. Or to watch her do it.

A quarter of an hour later, he fell on his face for what would not be the last time. Meanwhile Brienne and Arya were circling each other like hunting wolves, like warring lions, predators comfortable and happy in their dangerousness.

Another half of an hour and he'd earned the right to try facing Brienne, who magnanimously shifted her practice sword to her left hand. As if it were that easy. She looked nervous in a way she hadn't against Arya; on edge. 

His size brought a different dynamic right away - Brienne was no longer facing off against a particularly vicious gnat, but someone her own height. Someone who might be stronger, whereas what Arya used was leverage and gymnastics.

The forms made her arms twist slowly, as if the point were to show off every muscle to a sculptor in agonizing detail. Her eyes were bright and intense when he dared to take his gaze off her arms. He barely heard the noise of their first clash, though the hit reverberated up his arm. He was too busy watching her body twist, watching her move in the space, watching her lips part as she breathed. Gods help him. Gods help him. He'd never had this problem before - seeing her as the Maiden was one thing, it was enough to note that she was pure and yet unbeautiful, and forget about it. But this. She wasn't unbeautiful now, not now that he'd seen her this way.

She seemed to flee after their practice session had ended, and so he did the obviously wrong thing and followed her. After all, his own room in the guest house was just two doors down.

She said "yes?" when he knocked, and when he entered she was bathing her face with a damp towel. Her cheeks were red, from exertion or heat or ? The sight of him startled her and she hastily lowered the towel. "Ser Jaime."

"I'm sorry if I barged in on your practice with Arya," he said, because it was what he'd come to say, but then he had to add, "Can't it be Jaime? Are we not friends?"

"If we were that kind of friends I'd call you 'Lannister,'" she said, not incorrectly. 

She had, for a time, when she wasn't calling him "Kingslayer." Did she like him less now? 

"Better friends than that," he said. Because that was the way men talked to each other, and she was suddenly a woman.

"Fine," she said, eyes challenging. "Are you going to stop calling me 'my lady' because I beat you to the ground?"

"I doubt it." She had, though. Three times.

Each time, he'd wished Arya gone. What was _wrong_ with him?

He needed - not Bronn, who would escort him back to Brienne's room and shove him through her door with his trousers undone, at this point. Not Tyrion, who would laugh, or Pod, who would be politely horrified. A drink. He needed a drink, and then maybe the sept. Perhaps a prayer to the Warrior to stiffen his - spine -

No, he needed to stop thinking about stiffening. The Maiden then, to remind him what honor was, or the Mother, to remind him what women were supposed to be -

Except _fuck_ supposed-to-be.


	7. The Warrior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final god, on what is hopefully not the final day.

**VII. The Warrior**

The dead came, because of course they were always going to; Jaime wasn't at Winterfell for a particularly strange idyll of self-discovery. Even if that was sort of what had happened, in the interim. Watching himself become - if at first grudgingly - respected, accepted, and not only by his own men. Testing at the idea that his family might heal into a new unit, with Cersei on the outside -

But no, they'd tried that with Tyrion cut out, and it hadn't worked. Everything was poison with only him and Cersei, but it couldn't be right without her either. Even with - especially with the rumors that she'd miscarried a child, that there'd been too much blood and too many servants to witness for a hush-up - if Cersei was alone, they couldn't abandon her no matter what she had done.

 _No matter what she does in the future?_ the still small voice inside Jaime asked, but he could ignore it for now, because the dead were here, and he had come to fight.

Miraculously, so had most of the Lannister troops who'd fought with him in the Reach, because they'd been captured and bent the knee to Daenerys and she had brought her forces North. Even the Dragon Queen was savvy enough to see the looks on the faces of Jaime's commanders when they spotted him, and so - with a lot of royal sighing, and not a few threats delivered to Jaime personally - she and Snow had put the former Lannister troops under Jaime's command.

The threats were unnecessary. These men had already seen their compatriots burned by dragonfire before them, and Jaime had no intention of subjecting them to a repeat of that.

That Bronn's "clever" nickname for Brienne had circulated among the troops and stuck was unfortunate, except that it somehow gained her instant acceptance among the Lannister brigades. Jaime had no idea how. They should have mocked her, and she should have punched a few of them (including Jaime) and cut Bronn's throat. But instead she rolled her eyes (not without blushing, of course) and said "there are worse things they could have come up with;" and Snow was able to add all the defected soldiers who turned up from the West and the Riverlands to the Lannisters and form one massive brigade with Jaime and Brienne in charge of them. Because -

"You know your orders, you in the van," said the dour lord who led the Knights of the Vale, who'd become one of Snow's seconds in command. And -

"We follow Lady Lannister and take the ridge," Jaime's commander obediently replied, and off went a full troop of men who somehow believed Brienne had some legitimate connection to their house. 

Or maybe they were just afraid of her. Which was probably all right.

Jaime caught her before they separated, and he wanted to say something intelligent and worthwhile but instead he said, with a slightly crazed laugh, "We should make you Lady Lannister in truth."

She looked at him as if he were insane and asked, "For the comedic value?"

"What?" Of course she _would_ be a hilariously terrible Lady of the Rock in the usual mold, but how could that matter when their armies would be unstoppable?

_Which sounded like Cersei. Would he never have her voice out of his head?_

Maybe not, but it might be slowly dawning on him, at exactly the wrong time, that she would always be a part of his family no matter what other decisions he might take, seeing as she was _his sister_. Tyrion would have applauded.

Meanwhile Brienne had finally managed to convey, with an awkward gesture, the problem she actually had in mind.

"Not _Tyrion_ ," Jaime said, on the edge of hysteria. "I meant me."

"You aren't Lord Lannister," Brienne said, as if that were the part that mattered. Though he flattered himself that she sounded a bit choked.

"Details," he said. 

Brienne pointed with her drawn sword into the snowy gloom, where an enormous dark shadow was trudging toward them from the west. "Those are slightly more important details at the moment."

"Right." Yes. He could lose his mind if they survived. Not before. He clasped her hand and said, "Don't die."

"That is the idea," she replied, and then she was gone into the shadow with a few hundred men behind her.

Of course - whether it be fate, or the Old Gods or the New, or the machinations of the Three-Eyed Raven - they came together in the end, surrounded by wights and White Walkers, living and dead horses, and scatters of men in Lannister and Arryn and even battered royal armor. Jaime and Brienne, eyes meeting through the snow amid an uncanny hush; and then they both stabbed the same wight at the same time, and as it crumbled into nothingness their swords began to glow.

At first Jaime thought he was seeing things, but Brienne's eyes were wide, too, and the glow of the swords was increasing until it was bright as fire. Around them, men cursed and called to the gods in awe.

They didn't need words. His head turned toward the ridgeline where the spectral commander of these armies from hell sat on his terrible horse, and hers followed. The gods, Jaime knew for a certainty, _someone's_ gods, were telling them something.

They ran as one - shouts of "clear the way!" following them, and "Kingslayer!" and "Lannister! Lady Lannister!" and even the odd "Tarth!" as the armies of the living caught on that the swords of fire needed to find their target - and Jaime prayed.

And the Warrior was with them.


End file.
